Volunteers from the Columbus section of the National Council of Jewish Women have been speaking to local high school students about the warning signs of an abusive dating relationship, how to break free from such a relationship and what constitutes a healthy relationship. NCJW's school-based education project, "Love Shouldn't Hurt," was launched in 2007. It features a video presentation, followed by interactive discussion led by trained volunteers. As part of the presentation, students receive a pocket-sized resource card that lists two ways that teens can get confidential help: the National Teen Dating Abuse 24/7 Helpline at 866-331-9474, or through the Web site loveisrespect.org.

news analysis Sony announced Tuesday its plan to cut 5 percent of its full-time workforce, in addition to a sizable chunk of contractors, and delaying investment in some factories. It's all part of the Japanese electronics giant's plan to save money amid the troubled global economic environment.

The total annual savings will eventually amount to US$1.1 billion by early 2010, the company says. But will it be enough? Sony's current struggles are well known, and it's not clear that just cutting 16,000 positions and a few factories is going to get the unwieldy behemoth back on track.

The company is huge, and it has had trouble finding cohesion among its brands and products. And with increased competition among all product categories, the Sony name just isn't the same as it was even five years ago.

"Years ago they were able to charge a price premium over other brands, but now, with strength of Samsung and others, it's harder for them to charge that premium," said Rick Giusto, vice president of IDC's consumer, new media, and computing analysis. "There's heightened competition within all consumer electronics segments."

Sony's size and reach into almost every category of electronics isn't its advantage anymore. It's simultaneously being forced to figure out how to compete with strong competitors in every category: mobile phones, TVs, cameras, Blu-ray players, video consoles, portable music players, laptops, and more.

Sony had always been able to charge more for its brand name because its quality surpassed that of competitors like Samsung. That's just not the case anymore, as others have proved their mettle as makers of quality products. It's Samsung, the market leader in televisions, that determines TV pricing now. So if Samsung lowers its prices, Sony is forced to respond.

And it's not going to get easier. The current economic crisis will only intensify the battle for customers among all the big names in electronics.

"There's going to be hyper competition within different (consumer electronics) segments through the Christmas holidays and into next year," said Giusto. "We're going to see price cuts because people are going to try to stimulate demand...That's just going to continue."

But the announced restructuring doesn't directly address this. Here's what Sony plans to do:

It will outsource the manufacturing of a planned increase in CMOS image sensors for mobile phones, and delay increasing its investment in a liquid crystal display TV plant in Slovakia. Overall, the plan includes eventually closing 5 or 6 more of its 57 worldwide manufacturing sites.

Delaying investment--as opposed to cutting back--likely won't hurt Sony's LCD business, according to Paul Gagnon, who monitors the TV industry for market research firm DisplaySearch.

"Sony (already) has a lot of capacity (to build TVs)," he said. "In a down market, delaying investment is not a bad idea. Particularly because there are concerns about how much incremental growth you can get in developed regions (like North America and Europe) and how quickly new markets might grow in India and China."

Additionally, 8,000 full-time and 8,000 contract employees will be eliminated by March of 2010. The company will be shutting down an LCD TV manufacturing plant employing 560 in Westmoreland, Penn., and a video tape plant in Dax, France, which currently employees 300. Beyond that, the company is being close-lipped about which business units and regions will be most affected by the restructuring plan.

While that seems like a lot of large numbers, some say it's probably not enough. The final cost cuts aren't due until early 2010, according to Sony's statement, and that "appears too slow," according to J.P. Morgan analyst Yoshiharu Izumi. He said Sony's priorities as far as which businesses will see the cuts and when isn't clear enough. Izumi said in a research note he personally hoped to see the most attention paid to the TV business.

Though Sony has made big strides in getting its TV business back on track toward profitability, it is still falling short. The company has invested heavily in LCD panel technology, but has still had to contend with rapidly declining prices, competition with budget brands, and reduced demand as the market becomes saturated with flat-panel sets.

It found success creating a lower-end line of TVs specifically for discount chains Wal-Mart Stores and Target. It meant going away from Sony's traditional premium brand image, but it helped drive up the company's market share in TVs again, where it remains No. 2 behind Samsung. It looks like a good move now, with the United States in a recession, and consumers who will be more conservative with their spending on TVs, Blu-ray players, and cameras.

While Sony struggles to find the answers to its brand woes, it's far from the only electronics maker struggling right now. Fellow Japanese giant Panasonic said last month its yearly profits will take a hit, and Samsung on Monday said its profits, sales, and capital expenditures would fall. LCD panel makers in Taiwan and Korea have also announced that they plan to scale back or delay investment.

"2009 is a year when a lot of CE makers are going to scale back investments," said Giusto.

So it could be a more level playing field the company is competing on in that regard. But Giusto said it's important that Sony not scale back too much.

"As long as they don't do something like exit the low end, because that's where a lot of the volume is going to be," he said.

This article was first published as a blog on CNET News.com.

It was late afternoon and the young mother was hiding in the kitchen of her banana-thatch shack, lighting a cooking fire she hoped her neighbors would not see - she gets food aid while they must scrounge to eat.

Her 4-year-old daughter - whose sunken eyes drew worldwide attention in an Associated Press photograph that showed her dangling limply from the strap of a scale - grinned in anticipation.

It's been a month since little Venecia Louis got emergency treatment for malnutrition, and now she is walking, playing and even has a pinch of baby fat on her cheeks.

Venecia was among dozens of children suffering from severe malnutrition who were airlifted from this remote region in Haiti's southeast to hospitals in Port-au-Prince after 26 children died from starvation here.

As a result, Venecia and her family now get just enough food aid to scrape by.

Venecia smiled last week as her mother, Rosemen Saint-Juste, prepared a can and a half of rice that would be dinner for six people. She has gained some weight and her arms are plumper after treatment with antibiotics, anti-worm medications and enriched milk. But she is by no means cured from her life-threatening bout with malnutrition.

The child's 30-year-old mother hoards what she can to protect her children's health but says she must give away some to the hungry families who live nearby or risk their revenge - by physical attack or the Voodoo spell she believes they might cast to kill her children.

"The food I have is going to last for three days" instead of four, she said after giving away some of her rice. "If I don't share it with my neighbors, the devil will eat my kids."

Four tropical storms that killed 793 people in August and September and caused $1 billion in damage made Haiti's ongoing food crisis even worse. Crops were wiped out and mountain roads destroyed, cutting farmers off from markets where they sell their crops and buy food for their children.

Little attention had been paid to the villages around Baie d'Orange, located on a muddy plateau 6,000 feet above the Caribbean, until doctors from nearby cities alerted the international aid groups Terre des Hommes about deaths and severe malnutrition there.

An AP report on the crisis and photos of Venecia, who was initially identified by the hospital as Venecia Lonis, and other severely malnourished children brought an outpouring of offers of help.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, Democrat of Los Angeles, cited the AP report in urging the U.S. Agency for International Development to search for any Haitian children in danger of starvation and pledged to follow up with the Haitian ambassador and President Rene Preval. Two church congregations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania that raised $18,000 were among many groups moved by their plight.

In response to the children's deaths, aid groups have stepped up their work in this isolated pocket that in some places lies just over a peak from the capital's richest suburbs - but a six-hour trek over a circuitous mountain highway, washed-out bridges and unmarked goat paths.

The U.N. World Food Program now feeds 5,000 people here every two weeks, delivering food primarily by helicopter. USAID has increased its nutrition programs by $4.5 million nationwide.

Medical aid organizations Doctors Without Borders and Medicins du Monde have set up clinics as they scour the region for more pockets of hunger. They have not found any as severe as Baie d'Orange, according to a Doctors Without Borders spokesman, Francois Servranckx.

Still, the donations are merely a stopgap measure, residents say. Far more critical is support for rebuilding their fields so they can feed themselves.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization delivered seeds to about 400 families last month, and Oxfam is also distributing farm aid. But the farmers say they are not getting what they need most - supplies to restore their barren fields.

"If they give us seeds and they don't give us fertilizer, we can't grow anything," said Enock Augustin, whose severely malnourished 5-year-old daughter, Bertha, was also hospitalized last month.

A single sack, enough to cover half an acre for a three-month growing cycle, costs $62.50, he said - more than twice what most Haitians make in a month. And the price has tripled over the past three years.

Both of Saint-Juste's young daughters show signs of extreme protein deficiency - distended stomachs, protruding ribs and frail limbs. But it was Venecia who turned dangerously ill.

For a month, the mother watched as her daughter's frail body swelled and the circles under her eyes darkened. With no money and no hospital nearby, she could only pray as word spread of children dying.

Finally Saint-Juste heard that Doctors Without Borders had come to the region. Carrying Venecia, she walked for hours from their village of Mabrignol to the makeshift clinic, and the child was airlifted by helicopter Nov. 9 to the aid group's hospital in Port-au-Prince.

"I didn't think she was going to make it to the hospital," Saint-Juste said. The child stayed there for 15 days.

Now home, the girl nicknamed "Manushka" scrambles to keep up with her older siblings, wearing a smudged gray Eeyore sweat shirt. The circles have faded under her eyes, and a healthier color has returned to her cheeks.

But like her 6-year-old sister Minush, her stomach remains swollen. Their 14-month-old brother, Roselin, is pale and listless. Only the eldest, 9-year-old Silner, appears in reasonably good health.

Saint-Juste and her children huddle each night on a single cot in their shack of dried banana stalks; their former home was burned down by thieves while Saint-Juste was with Venecia at the hospital. Her two eldest children narrowly escaped.

The children's father, a shoeshine named Edner Louis, lives in Port-au-Prince and sometimes sends money. Saint-Juste also earns a ration of food and about 62 cents a day working in her neighbors' fields during the spring.

On Thursday, volunteers from the Greater Works Outreach church in Monroeville, Pa., and St. John's United Methodist Church in Turnersville, N.J., distributed food and other aid to some 600 people in nearby Baie d'Orange.